Cisco Wireless Release 8.4 Product Bulletin

Cisco Umbrella WLAN

Cisco Umbrella (OpenDNS) integration with wireless lan controller

Cisco Umbrella WLAN and WLC integration provides web classification and security for clients connecting to Cisco WLC. Key differentiators involve granular web classification and reporting by WLAN, User role and location. This feature will be supported on Cisco WLC 2504, 5508, 8510, 5520, 8540 and WiSM2.

Domain based ACL

Domain based ACL allows administrators to define an domain access control list (ACL) in order to allow or disallow traffic. This additional level of security has been added for wireless to permit the user to block or allow a specific set of domains

Domain based ACL extends the ACL from Layer 3 IP to domain based ACL. This feature is support on WLC 8540 and 5520 only.

ISE enhancement

Smart default configuration for ISE in Wireless controllers

Simplified single click day 0 express smart default setup for ISE in the WLAN and WLC configurations.

TrustSec

TrustSec Software-Defined Segmentation, enables controls to be defined simply by using endpoint roles, instead of using IP addresses 

Network segmentation is essential for protecting critical business assets, but traditional segmentation approaches involve operational complexity and can be difficult to introduce to existing environments gracefully.

By classifying systems using human-friendly logical groups, security rules can be defined using these groups, which are more flexible and much easier to manage than using IP address-based controls. 

IP addresses do not indicate the role of a system, the type of application a server hosts, the purpose of an IoT device or the threat-state of a system, but a TrustSec Security Group can denote any of these roles.

Software-defined segmentation on Access Points and Wireless Controller is much easier to enable and manage than VLAN-based segmentation and can be used for use-cases such as:

Virtual Controller N+1 High Availability

High Availability with N + 1 solution now available on the virtual Wireless LAN Controller

Enhanced virtualization offering with N+1 High Availability. By introducting High Availability on the virtual controller an improved user experience can be delivered. Note please follow the implementation guidelines.

HyperV support for vWLC

Virtual Wireless LAN Controller now supported on the HyperV hypervisor

Support for virtual Wireless LAN Controller (vWLC) on the HyperV hypervisor. Cisco’s vWLC is now supported on any x86 server with VMWare Hypervisor ESXi4.x, 5.x, and 6.x as well as KVM and HyperV.

Ethernet over GRE (EoGRE) support for Wave 2 Access Points

Ethernet over GRE support for Wave 2 Access Points

Ethernet over GRE (EoGRE) is a aggregation solution for aggregating Wi-Fi traffic from hotspots. This solution enables customer premises equipment (CPE) devices to bridge the Ethernet traffic coming from an end host, and encapsulate the traffic in Ethernet packets over an IP GRE tunnel. When the IP GRE tunnels are terminated on a service provider broadband network gateway, the end host’s traffic is terminated and subscriber sessions are initiated for the end host.

This release allows Wave 2 Access Points the ability to establish EoGRE tunnels directly from a Flexconnect Mode access point.

IPv6 EoGRE Support for Flexconnect Mode Access Points

IPv6 EoGRE Support on Flexconnect Mode APs allows the ability to establish an IPv6 EoGRE tunnel directly from an AP in Flexconnect mode

This release brings IPv6 EoGRE tunnel support, providing end to end IPv6 from the Access point to the EoGRE tunnel gateway.

IPv6 support on Wave 2 APs

All 802.11ac Wave 1 Access Points will provides native IPv6 functionity

As more and more networks move to IPv6, Cisco 802.11ac Wave 2 Access Points will support native IPv6 functionality.

Mesh support on the Cisco Aironet AP 1560 series

Mesh support on the Cisco Aironet AP 1560 series allows for Access points to wirelessly mesh over-the-air

Brings mesh support on the AP1560. This allows the access point the option to operate as a mesh mode Root Access Point (RAP) or mesh Access Point (MAP) to form a wireless backhaul network.

Air Time Fairness on 802.11ac Wave 1 Access Points in Mesh Mode

Air Time Fairness (ATF) on 802.11ac Wave 1 Access Points in Mesh Mode allows users to regulate radio resources for mesh networks

Traditional (wired) implementations of QOS regulate egress bandwidth. With wireless networking, the transmission medium is via radio waves that transmit data at varying rates. Instead of regulating egress bandwidth, it makes more sense to regulate the amount of airtime needed to transmit frames. Air Time Fairness (ATF) is a form of wireless QOS that regulates downlink airtime (as opposed to egress bandwidth) for specific SSIDs.

The additional of ATF on Mesh, allows for users to implement this feature on mesh networks.

Cisco Aironet AP 1815W support

Cisco Aironet 1815w Access Point brings a full slate of Cisco high-performance functionality to multiple-dwelling-unit deployments

The Cisco^® Aironet^® 1815w Access Point offers a compact, wall plate–mountable access point, ideal for hospitality, cruise ships, residential halls, or other multiple-dwelling-unit deployments.

Packing 802.11ac Wave 2 wireless standards support and Gigabit Ethernet wired connectivity into a sleek device, the 1815w is built to take full advantage of existing cabling infrastructure while blending into the visual footprint. This combination provides best-in-class performance while reducing total cost of ownership.

FlexConnect support for Wave 2 AP’s for select features

Proxy ARP – AP will act as an ARP Proxy to respond ARP requests on behalf of wireless clients.

NAT/PAT – AP will support NAT/PAT for central DHCP.

AAA QoS Override per Client – Clients will be able to assign QOS profile based on AAA.

Increased Mobility Express Scale

Increases the Mobility Express AP Scale to 100 APs

Cisco Mobility Express is a software-based controller function integrated on Cisco Wave 2 Access Points. It is a simplified, feature rich WiFi architecture with enterprise level WLAN capability streamlined for small to mid-sized wireless networks.

The 8.4 Software release increases the Mobility Express scale from 25 APs per Mobility Express Controller to max 100 APs.

Mobility Express provisioning using Plug and Play (PnP)

PnP ability to configure Mobility Express controller using the APIC-EM

Helps preprovision Mobility Express controller from a central service (APIC-EM), even eliminating need for specific expertise on-site.

WeChat Support

Easy Wi-Fi Connectivity using the WeChat App

Support Wechat App for easy Wi-Fi connectivity by QR-code scanning to redirection or captival portal redirection.

LAG in Transition

Additional Configuration support for WLCs which are being converted to and from LAG mode

Cisco WLCs which support Link aggregation (LAG) goes into a LAG-in-Transition (LAT) mode during transition between LAG to non-LAG mode or vice versa. The transition is complete only when the WLC is rebooted. During the LAT mode, the user can make configuration or interface changes and also revert to the previous LAG mode. And when the WLC is rebooted, it can lead to configuration loss or system failure during reboot.

This feature, prevents such incidents by restricting interface-related configuration changes when the WLC is in LAT state.

Guest User Management - Client Allowed listing

Simplified Guest Management

Locations like a university receives many guests with multiple devices (clients). It becomes eminent to protect the network from misuse or unauthorized access and allow legitimate clients to connect to the network. Registering or deregistering of clients is a tedious and time consuming task to perform on regular basis requiring a simpler solution.

This feature addresses the need of allowing clients on a particular WLAN or SSID based on MAC address. For this purpose, the currently existing features will be reused - mac filtering option on WLAN, adding lobby admin user and reuse AAA DB to store the list of allowed clients on a WLAN.

This feature administration is managed by two administrators:

Global Administrator—creates a lobby admin user on the WLC and enables lobby administrator access on a WLAN.

Lobby Administrator—adds or deletes the clients from an allowed list to manage the association to a WLAN or SSID through GUI interface only. Existing lobby administrators can also be used to configure the allowed lists.